Imagine waking up on a ship surrounded by icebergs, camping in the snowy wilderness and kayaking among the exhalations of humpback whales. You can also take part in a polar plunge, board small zodiac boats to search for leopard seals and collect samples for science research.
Travelling there was a childhood dream of mine. I saw it as a way to test myself against something so much bigger. I nearly applied for a role at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) 30 years ago, but then my wife and I were expecting our first child. Instead, I've worked as a chef in Michelin-star restaurants in Paris and London, hotels in Kuala Lumpur and St Moritz, and even at a school in Oxfordshire.
He had flown in from Mar-a-Lago and, he told me, was there to observe. The next day, he watched as Åsa Rennermalm, a Rutgers University professor who studies polar regions, sat onstage with European foreign ministers and spoke out against cuts to U.S. science funding. "A leading US Arctic scientist is on stage absolutely ripping her country to the delight of the audience," Dans wrote on X. "Embarassing." He punctuated his post with an American-flag emoji.
Krill are a keystone species and the main food source for whales, penguins and seals. Aker QRILL, the world's largest harvester of krill, a tiny crustacean and keystone of Antarctica's fragile ecosystem, and its sister company, Aker BioMarine, produce feed additives for aquaculture and dietary supplements for pets and humans.
So, believe it or not, the cold air that we get down here actually tends to help the performance of the helicopter. DAN: The low pressure systems we have here, particularly in this, weather we've been having, tends to create the opposite effect by decreasing the pressure. Low pressure systems, thinner air. DAN: And that cooler air makes the pressure higher again.
Recently, Anchorage, Alaska's largest city with nearly 400,000 residents, has just recorded its snowiest January on record. Tucked in between the mighty Cook Inlet and pushed right up against the Chugach Mountains, Anchorage sits in prime location for some serious snow totals. Moisture from pacific storms builds up over the inlet, and thanks to orographic lift caused by the mountains, forces that moisture to drop over Anchorage. Thanks to Alaska's northernly location, that moisture often falls in the form of snow.
Changes in the Antarctic do not stay in the Antarctic. Though Antarctica is far away, changes here will impact the rest of the world through changes in sea level, oceanic and atmospheric connections and circulation changes.
In this photo, I'm preparing drifting buoys for deployment. This was my main responsibility aboard the RV Falkor (too), during a 27-day research expedition in October 2025 exploring the Malvinas Current, an ocean current that runs alongside Argentina. The expedition included biologists, geologists and physical oceanographers such as myself; I'm a PhD candidate at the Sea and Atmosphere Research Center (CIMA) in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Ice-sheet retreat lined up with low algae growth over the past ~500,000 years, implying less CO₂ uptake in parts of the Southern Ocean during warm periods. The study points to iceberg-delivered, iron-rich sediments from West Antarctica during warm intervals, not windblown dust. The iron-bearing minerals in these sediments were highly weathered and not readily bioavailable to marine algae. If WAIS keeps shrinking, similar sediment delivery could weaken Southern Ocean carbon uptake, creating feedback that could amplify climate change.
Decades of successful scientific collaboration could be at risk if Europe-US political relations continue to fray over trade and defense issues. For more than 30 years, Arctic nations have worked together across the physical, biological and social sciences to understand one of the world's fastest changing regions. Since the late 1970s, the Arctic has lost around 33,000 square miles of sea ice each year roughly the same area as Czechia.
Polar bears are the poster children of climate changeand for good reason. These giant bears hunt, mate and spend their days hanging out on Arctic sea ice, which is rapidly disappearing as the climate warms. But some polar bears, it seems, are far more resilient than we realized: new research suggests that in one region, the bears are adapting to the declining sea ice.
Climate change which U.S. President Donald Trump calls the greatest con job ever perpetrated in the world is precisely what is driving the push to gain control of Greenland, an ambition openly declared by Trump. Human-caused global warming is reaching record levels in the Arctic region. This triggers ice melt, opening new shipping routes that major powers want to control, as well as theoretically easier access to the island's resources minerals and fossil fuels.
That seemingly paradoxical dynamic results from several factors. Foremost among them is the rebound of land beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet, a mile-thick body of glacial ice that covers 80 percent of the island and is being lost to melting at a rate of roughly 200 billion tons each year. As the ice sheet loses mass, the land beneath rises.
The vast gravity hole, known as the Antarctic Geoid Low (AGL), is the product of incredibly slow rock movements, according to the experts. Starting 70 million years ago - a time while dinosaurs still roamed the Earth - less-dense rock built up beneath the frozen continent and weakened the pull of gravity. The gravity hole started small before rapidly growing in strength between 50 and 30 million years ago - creating the strange ocean dip that we see today.